Ex-CIA official who signed letter warning Hunter Biden laptop story was disinfo proud Trump lost

An ex-CIA official who signed a letter along with dozens of other former U.S. intelligence officials in the backstretch of the 2020 presidential election warning that stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop being disinformation now says his efforts led to then-President Trump losing reelection.

"I take special pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump," John Sipher, a former CIA deputy chief of Russian Operations, recently posted on Twitter. "I lost the election for Trump? Well then I [feel] pretty good about my influence."

The October 2020 open letter – released as voters were making final decisions about whether to reelect Trump or elect Democrat Joe Biden – was signed by 51 ex-intelligence officials including former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former CIA Director John Brennan.

Hunter Biden is the son of President Biden. The discovery of the laptop at a Delaware repair shop and its content, reported first by the New York Post, was of major interest in 2020, considering the questions surrounding Hunter Biden's overseas business dealings while his father was vice president.

Twitter suspended the Post's account after the news outlet used it to link to the laptop story.

"We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement – just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case," the letter in part reads.

Sipher has said his previous claims of helping Trump lose were sarcasm, according to the Epoch Times.